2007-02-07

Guerilla Myths

Someone else has written about the myth of glorious guerillas, the same as I have previously said. I in turn got my knowledge from reading similar articles (which I don't have URLs for), and applied critical thinking. I am bringing this up again so that I have an external URL for reference, and to comment on some of the points raised.

"Myths about invincible guerrillas and insurgents are a direct result of America’s collective misunderstanding of its defeat in South Vietnam"

This is exactly the problem. The left-wing has managed to completely brainwash the American public, on behalf of their Soviet comrades. It shouldn't have been possible. Someone on the right should have stopped this from happening. I don't know why the right-wing are taking no action against this serious problem.

"But it was not the mujahidin’s strength that forced the Soviets to leave; it was the Soviet Union’s own economic and political weakness at home"

It was neither. The Soviets simply had a new leader who didn't believe in applying the jackboot on other countries. They were not forced to leave Afghanistan any more than they were forced to leave East Germany.

"Of course, history is not without genuine insurgent successes. Fidel Castro’s victory in Cuba is probably the best known"

This was won economically, by bribing the government forces to not fight. The insurgents did not win a military victory.

"there was the IRA’s partial triumph in 1922"

I can't be bothered looking this up, but I doubt that IRA goons beat the British military. Not sure what a "partial triumph" is either. Britain chose to leave Australia in 1901. Does that mean Australia won a military victory? Did Gandhi's "insurgency" defeat Britain? Just because some goon fires a gun does not mean that they had a military victory. Israel withdrew from the Sinai desert too. The US withdrew from France. So? Political decisions happen regardless of whether there was an insurgency or not.

"Algeria’s defeat of the French between 1954 and 1962"

Ok, I think this one might be correct. I haven't researched that. But I wonder where they got their weapons from? And from memory they suffered horrific losses to achieve that. And I bet that still came down to a political decision by France to leave rather than a battlefield defeat.

"The real question is whether the United States might have already missed its chance to snuff it out"

A load of claptrap. There's no such thing as "missing its chance". Even if the insurgency were to somehow manage to transform into a 500,000-man army with tanks it could STILL be easily defeated. Exactly as happened in 3.5 weeks in 2003.

"One tragedy of the Iraq war may be that the administration’s new strategy came too late to avert a rare, decisive insurgent victory"

More claptrap. Even if the US were to withdraw tomorrow, 300k heavily armed professional Iraqi security forces with majority support of the population will be able to defeat 20k goons. This is not rocket science.

UPDATE: A wonderful article here explaining how soldiers don't like playing "cops and robbers" - ROFL!